


The Rest of Their Lives

by Dayja



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Companions, Death, Episode: s07e05 The Angels Take Manhattan, F/M, Gen, Regeneration, hope is a fragile thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-09 12:14:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7801465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dayja/pseuds/Dayja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They can always spend the rest of their lives with him.  He can never spend the rest of his life with them.  Not when he always has one more life to live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rest of Their Lives

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own/am not associated with/make no money from Doctor Who.

He never said it.  Not even silently inside his own head.  It was too fragile for that, felt too much like tempting fate to so much as allow the thought to cross his mind.

The thought that he never spoke, never allowed to materialize fully into words, first came to him the day Riversong almost killed him.

That was a lie.  The thought came long before that.  It was born in the very first goodbye, the first real goodbye.  But he had more or less suppressed it until that almost death.  What was the point of dwelling when up to then it was never a possibility?

“No regeneration,” his ship had told him.  That wasn’t unheard of; there were poisons that could fatally destroy a timelord’s chances to regenerate.  But that wasn’t what his ship said.  It wasn’t the poison stopping his regeneration.  It was his own age.

Twelve regenerations.  Thirteen bodies.  He hadn’t been absolutely certain until that moment.  He had suspected; he was generally good at math and this wasn’t a hard equation, but the aborted regeneration had thrown him off.  Had it counted?  Had he used up an entire regeneration?  Even using up half a regeneration might not leave him enough energy when he needed to fully regenerate.  Or had he burned just enough to save himself, and so would be able to do it again?

And then he was dying from a kiss, and there was no point in the thought because it was too late.  But Riversong didn’t kill him.  And he was on his very final body.  He could still live for millennia longer than a human’s life span, but once dead, that would be the end.

Long ago, a very long time ago, when he had a different face and a different voice and a younger soul, he told a good friend that she could spend her whole life with him, but he could not spend his whole life with her.

This had been the tragic truth of his entire life.  He befriended mayflies, loved them, and then had to journey on after their life was spent.  Most of the time he left them long before.  As long as he never looked back, never checked, then all of his friends were still alive, out there in time.  He could always visit them, so long as he never did.

And now there were the Ponds.

He never said, ‘These are my final companions’.  He never said, ‘This is my final family.’  He never said, ‘Together we can spend the rest of our lives together.  We can grow old together.’  He definitely never said, ‘This is my final reward.  At last, companions to last a lifetime.’

He never said it.  He didn’t allow the thought to cross his mind.

Not saying it didn’t stop him from being careful of them, and not just in the usual sense of ‘don’t let my friends die’.  His body might be his last, but it would still be infinitely more long lived than theirs.  He had to regulate his visits.  An adventure with them here, a visit there, and then off again for a decade or so.

He never said, 'This is like having a place to come home.'  He never said, 'This is my family at last.'

Never saying it didn’t stop the agonizing disappointment when time locked their final years beyond his reach and left him by their graves.

He had lost companions before, again and again and again and again and again.  But not again.  No more final companions.  No more final family.  Not for the rest of his life.


End file.
